Long Time Coming

by Vanessa Miller

  "What's wrong with you?" he asked in a tone that displayed all the fear he was feeling."All you did was throw a few potato chips on the ground, and I'm sure that clerk has been yelled at before."

  Jamal always looked out for his mother. This boy had truly been a gift from God. If God even gave out gifts. She had always imagined that she would be there for the important moments in his life. Like when he tried out for sports. Jamal wanted to play both basketball and football. Kenisha just knew he would be a star on the field and on the court. So she would have to be there to chase away all the gold diggers. Kenisha could foresee all the skirts chasing after her handsome son now. If she wasn't alive, who was going to be there to say, "Get away from my Heisman-Trophy-winning, Super-Bowl-ring-wearing, multimillion-dollar son"? The thought of not being there to steer her son away from so many of the wrong influences that were sure to come his way caused Kenisha to ache all over, and she began to cry."I'm so sorry, Jamal. I'm so sorry."

  "What's wrong, Mama?" Jamal asked as he rushed to his mother's side.

  Kenisha couldn't stop crying. She wanted to, because she saw how her mood was scaring Jamal. But she was powerless to do anything about it."M-mommy just needs some rest. Leave me alone for a l-little while. Okay, Jamal?"

  "I'm going to get you some help," Jamal said as he ran out of his mother's room, down the stairs, and to the telephone. He dialed his Aunt Aisha. She picked up on the fifth ring."My mom needs help. Can you please come see about her?" Jamal begged.

  Aisha's voice was groggy from sleep as she asked, "Is she hurt?"

  "She won't stop crying," Jamal answered.

  "Okay, tell her I'll be over there this evening."

  "No, Auntie Isha, she needs you now." Jamal's voice was frantic.

  "Calm down, Jamal, your mama is all right. I was up all night practicing for this reality show interview, so I need a little extra sleep. I'll be over there as soon as I get up," she said and then hung up the phone.

  Jamal sat staring blankly at the walls as the dial tone blared in his ear. Then an idea struck him. He hung up the phone and pulled a piece of paper off the refrigerator. His mom kept telephone numbers of schools, hospitals, and such attached to a magnet on the refrigerator. Jamal scanned the list and found the number for his school. He dialed and after hitting several options, he was connected with the school secretary."May I please speak with Mrs. Morris?" Jamal asked.

  "She's in her office. Who's calling?" the woman asked.

  "My name is Jamal Moore. I'm a student there, and I really need to speak with Mrs. Morris because I'm in trouble."

  "The assistant principal handles most of the student issues. I can transfer you to Mr. Landers right now if you like."

  "No!" Jamal shouted."Please just tell Mrs. Morris that I'm on the phone. I know she'll help me if you just let her know that it's me."

  There was hesitation on the line; then the woman said, "Hold one moment, please."

  Holding his breath, Jamal silently prayed to God: please let Mrs. Morris pick up the phone, please let Mrs. Morris pick up the phone.

  "Jamal? Jamal, what's wrong?" Deidre asked as she picked up the phone.

  "Please come over here, Mrs. Morris." The words gushed out of Jamal's mouth.

  "What's going on, Jamal?"

  "It's my mom. She hasn't come out of her bedroom in days, and now she's crying and I can't get her to stop. Please help us, Mrs. Morris." Now tears were running down Jamal's face, and his voice cracked as he finished his sentence.

  "I'm on my way, Jamal. Go sit with your mom until I get there"

  "Okay. Thank you," Jamal said as he wiped the tears from his face and hung up the phone. He then ran back up the stairs and into Kenisha's room. She was still crying. Jamal went over to his mother and put his arms around her."I don't want you to be sad, Mama."

  "I'm sorry, Jamal. I just can't stop crying," Kenisha said as she brought her pillowcase to her face and wiped the tears.

  Jamal ran to the bathroom, tore some tissue off the roll, and ran back to his mother. He tore the tissue in half and wiped Kenisha's face with one half and handed the other half of the tissue to her and said, "Here, blow your nose."

  Kenisha took the tissue and blew her nose. She sat up."You take such good care of your mama. I couldn't have asked for a better son."

  13

  When Deidre hung up the phone, she pushed the intercom and then asked the school secretary, "Can you cancel my appointment with Dr. Thomas? I need to take care of something, and I'm not sure how long I'll be gone." She stood up, grabbed her coat and car keys, and left the building.

  She wasn't sure why, but she felt connected to this family. The sound of Jamal's sorrowful voice had almost broken her heart. She wanted to do whatever she could to help him.

  Deidre wasn't sure what had happened to cause Kenisha's depression, but she knew for sure that Kenisha had definitely spiraled into a depression, because she had been there herself. All these years of not being able to conceive a child and not being able to tell Johnson the awful truth had caused Deidre so much pain, that even knowing Jesus hadn't stopped her from spiraling into the grips of depression every now and then.

  Deidre's deep depressions had caused her to wonder if she had truly given her life to Christ when she'd uttered the sinner's prayer, or if she had just been saying words that meant nothing and went nowhere? But then she would remind herself of the biblical heroes in the Old Testament, like Elijah. The prophet Elijah was almost supernatural in his zeal for the things of God, but this same man fled to Mount Horeb, sat under a juniper tree, and asked God to let him die. For Deidre, the most memorable part of that story was found in 1 Kings 19:7: "And the angel of the LORD came again the second time, and touched him, and said, Arise and eat; because the journey is too great for thee."

  Deidre had certainly learned that some of life's journeys were simply too great for her, and she needed to lean on the Lord to get through them. Just as God had sent an angel to strengthen Elijah, Deidre knew that Johnson had been her angel, sent from heaven above. He had helped her move past the pain, and now she wanted to do the same for Kenisha. So she prayed for God's healing power to touch Kenisha and end her depression.

  When Deidre arrived at Kenisha's apartment, she jumped out of her car and rushed to the door. She knocked and then turned the knob, hoping that the door would open. It was locked, so she knocked again, or rather, she pounded on the door this time."Jamal, it's me."

  The door swung open and Kenisha was standing there holding a bunch of soggy tissue in her hand."The way you were banging on my door, I thought you were the police."

  Kenisha looked disheveled, with her hair standing on top of her head. She smelled as if she hadn't seen a shower in days, but Deidre didn't say a word about her appearance."I was worried about you," Deidre said as she walked into the apartment."Jamal sounded frantic when he called the school."

  "Oh, don't worry. Jamal will be back in school tomorrow. I already let him know that he can't stay here with me."

  "That's not why I'm here, Kenisha. I was really concerned about you." She pointed at the wet tissue in Kenisha's hand."Jamal said that you couldn't stop crying. What's going on?"

  "Trust me," Kenisha said, "you don't even want to know my horror story."

  "Jamal also said that you hadn't been out of your bed in several days."

  Kenisha lifted her arms and twirled around before plopping down on the couch in the living room."I'm out of bed now. So you can go on back to work. Don't worry, I'm not going to neglect my children."

  "Why do you act so defensive all the time?" Deidre asked.

  "How am I supposed to act? You did threaten to call Children's Services on me. And now you want to keep coming over here acting like you're concerned. But how do I know that you're not just trying to build a case against me with the truant officer?"

  "Mrs. Morris isn't here because I skipped school today, Mama. I called her and asked her to come," Jamal interjected.

  "Why didn't y
ou tell me that you called her?" Kenisha asked.

  "I called Auntie Aisha first, but she was tired from being up all night. So I called Mrs. Morris and asked if she would come help you." He hunched his shoulders and then added, "Nothing I was doing seemed to work."

  "Jamal, I'm sorry I scared you, but you can't go calling everybody in the world, telling them our business. Some things are best left in your own home. Okay?"

  Jamal looked down at his feet as he said, "Okay, Mama, but you're not acting like yourself. You need help."

  "Talk to me, Kenisha. What's wrong?" Deidre tried again as she took a seat on the chair next to the couch.

  Kenisha looked at Deidre for a moment, shook her head in frustration, and then stood up. She turned to Jamal and said, "Fix yourself some lunch. I'm going to sit outside for a minute and talk to Mrs. Deidre."

  Jamal nodded and went to the kitchen.

  Kenisha put on a pair of house shoes and then opened the front door and walked out.

  Deidre got up and followed her out. She unlocked her car doors, and she and Kenisha sat down in the front seats.

  "Talk to me, Kenisha. Is there anything I can do to help?" Deidre had dealt with numerous parents in her years as a teacher and principal. Once in a great while she ran into a mother who made her want to reach out and help. Kenisha was such a mother. Deidre saw so much potential in this young woman. Kenisha might be a young mother with too many kids and too many baby daddies, but she really cared about her children. And because of that, Deidre found herself wanting the best for all of them.

  "The cancer has spread," Kenisha said matter-of-factly.

  A look of shock and dread crossed Deidre's face before she could pull it back."What do you mean, the cancer has spread? They operated on you, and you did the chemo."

  "Same thing I've been saying ever since I got the news. But to be truthful, Dr. Lawson didn't make any promises to me. He said all along that the surgery might not work because of the late detection." Kenisha leaned back on the headrest and exhaled."What I don't understand is how I was supposed to know that I needed to get checked out. I'm only twenty-three. People my age don't get cancer. Right?"

  "That's what I would have thought. I'm so sorry, Kenisha."

  "Me too. Dr. Lawson thinks I have less than six more months left to live." Kenisha shook her head."If I make it the full six months, I'll be twenty-four, but that's still too young to die."

  Deidre was speechless. She'd driven over here thinking that Kenisha's mother had hurt herself or that the chemotherapy was affecting her, but never in her wildest imagination had she thought that Kenisha was dying. It was just as Kenisha had said—she was too young to die.

  "You're awfully quiet for someone who wanted to talk," Kenisha said with a smirk on her face.

  "To tell you the truth, I don't know what to say."

  Kenisha must not have known what to say either, because the car became deathly silent. Then something came to Deidre. In truth, Deidre didn't know why she hadn't thought of this first. She turned to Kenisha and asked, "Have you prayed?"

  Scoffing at the thought, Kenisha said, "I gave up on that when Dr. Lawson told me that I had cancer. If God wanted to help me, He could have just made sure none of this happened to me, but He didn't. So you can save the prayer for the next sucker."

  But Deidre wasn't going to let it end like that. She felt bad that she had been too wrapped up in her own misery to offer prayer the first day Kenisha had told her about the cancer. But Deidre firmly believed that being late was better than never showing up at all, so she said, "Prayer works, Kenisha. I've seen lives changed through prayer."

  Kenisha turned cold, unyielding eyes on Deidre."Yeah? Well, tell that to my children when I'm dead." She opened the car door and got out.

  Deidre rolled her window down."Wait, Kenisha, don't leave. I want to help you."

  Waving goodbye, Kenisha said, "Sorry, Deidre, I don't have time to pray. I need to clean my house and fix dinner for my children. But don't worry. I promise that Jamal will be in school tomorrow."

  "Okay. Well then, I'll come back over here on my lunch break tomorrow so we can talk." Deidre rolled up her window as Kenisha walked back into her apartment.

  Driving down the street, tears streamed down Deidre's face as she kept picturing Kenisha waving goodbye to her."How could that young girl be dying?"

  Her heart ached for Kenisha and the children. She couldn't imagine how it would be to bring children into the world and find out that she would not be able to raise them to adulthood. That would be almost as bad as never being able to have children. Deidre smashed her hand against the steering wheel as anger gripped her so tightly that she needed to lash out at somebody or something.

  When she got back to work, Christina handed her a note from Dr. Thomas."He seemed upset, so I would call him right away."

  "Okay, thanks," Deidre said, dreading picking up the phone to call Dr. Thomas. He was never pleasant to her, but now she had ticked him off by canceling their meeting. She dialed the phone anyway. When Dr. Thomas was on the line, Deidre said, "Sorry about missing our meeting. Something urgent came up."

  "I just bet it did," Dr. Thomas said."But your little stunt of running out of the office today isn't going to help you."

  With a look of confusion on her face, Deidre asked, "Did I do something wrong, Dr. Thomas?"

  "You tell me. Shameka Nickels filed a complaint against you. She says that you have singled her son out, and that you have suspended him numerous times for small infractions that other kids would have just received detention for."

  "That is simply not true. I have tried to work with that woman. But she doesn't seem to care that her son terrorizes the kids in his class. My teachers can't perform if they constantly have to stop what they are doing to discipline Ronny Nickels."

  "Well, I will be conducting a full investigation, and if it appears that you have singled this boy out, you'll be looking for a new assignment."

  Did this man just threaten to fire her? Deidre didn't know how much more of Dr. Thomas she was going to be able to tolerate. The man never gave her the benefit of the doubt on anything. But she wasn't about to stand idly by and lose her job over false allegations."I welcome your investigation, Dr. Thomas. Maybe once you're finished reviewing our files and talking with Ronny's teachers, you can give me a little guidance. Because Ronny is a very bright kid, with a good future ahead of him, if he gets steered in the right direction."

  "I'll look at everything and let you know what I find," Dr. Thomas said before hanging up the phone.

  For the rest of the day, Deidre tried her best to forget about Shameka Nickels, but she felt so bad for Ronny that she couldn't get him off her mind. And then, every time she thought about Ronny living with that awful mother of his, her thoughts strayed over to Jamal, and she feared for his future—a future without his mother.

  That night when Deidre went home she told Johnson about the horrible day she'd had—about Kenisha's doctor telling her she had six months to live and about her suspicions that Ronny Nickels would end up serving a life sentence in prison. Then she asked if he would pray with her.

  "Let's do this," was all Johnson said before he and Deidre bombarded heaven on behalf of Kenisha and her children. When they were finished praying for Kenisha and her children, Deidre and Johnson then bombarded heaven on behalf of Ronny Nickels.

  14

  True to her word, Deidre went back over to Kenisha's house on her lunch break the next day. She knew that Jamal was at school because she had seen him. Deidre just hoped that Kennedy and Diamond were out of the house as well. She had the feeling that Kenisha hadn't told them anything yet, so she didn't want anything to hinder their conversation.

  When Kenisha opened her front door, Deidre noted with pleasure that Kenisha had combed her hair and located the shower. She was dressed neatly and appeared to be in better spirits."Don't tell me that prayer doesn't work," Deidre said as she walked into Kenisha's place and sat down."I prayed for you all
night, and look at you. You're practically radiant."

  "I don't know if prayer had anything to do with it. I was just tired of letting my kids wander around like lost pups. So I knew I had to pull myself together." Plopping down on the couch beside Deidre, Kenisha added, "I'm not dead yet."

  "That's what I wanted to talk to you about." Deidre turned to face Kenisha."Johnson and I prayed for your healing last night, but then it came to me that you need to participate in this also." Deidre grabbed Kenisha's hands."I want to pray with you, okay?"

  Kenisha appeared to give the suggestion some thought, but in the next moment, she slid her hands away from Deidre."You can believe what you want, Deidre. But as far as I'm concerned, prayer just gives people false hope. And I have finally come to terms with the fact that I'm dying, so if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not go backward. I need to move forward and figure out what I'm going to do with my children."

  Deidre wanted to dispute Kenisha's comment about prayer providing false hope, but a slight nudging in her spirit let her know that this was not the time. So she simply met her where she currently resided."Okay, so let's say that if all else fails and you do . . . die"—she hesitated, not wanting to say that word—"is there anyone in your family who would be willing to adopt your children?"

  "I wouldn't want any of them to raise my children. And if I even thought they'd get them after I die, I'd probably put them all in a room and kill 'em. And then I'd stand trial, knowing that I wouldn't live to serve my time."

  "If I didn't think you were joking, I'd have to call the police right now."

  Kenisha rolled her eyes."Okay, I might not kill them. But my kids can't live with those people. They deserve better than that."

  "Do you have a will?"

  Stretching her arms out indicating the items in the living room, Kenisha sarcastically said, "Yeah, I have so many valuables that I meet with my attorney every year to update my will, right after I meet with my financial advisor."